I’m perhaps a bit late to the party with the ‘mindful’ part of the title, sorry, it was just a way to link the BBC comedy series
Such Brave Girls (the topic of the blog, as is mentioned in the title) and mental health awareness, as that's a major theme of the series. It’s hard to even know where to start with trying to describe a show like SBG but I’ll give it a go (without hopefully spoiling too much).
The show came out last year, and stars Kat Sadler (who also created the series) and her irl sister, Lizzie Davidson, who, funnily enough, play sisters Josie and Billie (respectively). There’s a lot of talent involved in the show, generally, as Simon Bird, of
The Inbetweeners fame, directed the show and Louise Brealey (who plays Deb, the Mum of Josie and Billie) appeared in
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,
Sherlock and
Bleak House.
The show itself is a pretty dark and extreme one in a lot of ways as it deals with topics such as mental health, trauma, death and abortion and is definitely in the vein of shows that aren’t afraid to go the…extra mile (a la the works of Julia Davis at times) and make the audience uncomfortable (in this case, often with cringe humour, such as the pregnancy test and hickey scenes, for example). However, while your mileage may vary and people have different tastes, one of the reasons I liked this show so much was because of how genuinely hilarious it is without being too mean or unpleasant in terms of tone as while I’m a big fan of dark material/programmes, I’m not always as keen on stuff that’s gratuitous or too horrible, just for the sake of it or for shock value. Interestingly, while this show has plenty of nasty characters (and isn’t exactly big on heartwarming moments), the aforementioned characters (and practically all of them, really) are well-defined and thought out and the situations and dynamics don’t feel cliched or twisted for the sake of it, for example. As such, the show itself feels pretty original and varied, despite only having one season (although a second series is coming soon). It’s also worth mentioning that Josie’s intense struggles with mental health are based on the real life experiences of Kat Sadler herself and while this doesn’t always necessarily have to be the case, writers using their own experiences really adds so much to the depth and insight into the characters and it is so incredibly important for women and people from marginalised groups to have more of a voice in the industry and to have the space to make shows which tell of their real experiences and stories.
To look into the characters a bit more, I thought we’d start with Deb, the single mother of Josie and Billie (although she does date Dev for most of the series but it becomes clear early on that it’s probably not going to work for a variety of reasons). Deb’s an all round cruel and unsupportive parent who is certainly part of the reason why the sisters (especially Billie) grow up with unhealthy views about dating and feminism and are made to feel that ‘holding onto a man’ is the most important thing for a young woman. The show deals with this concept in a major way over multiple episodes and it looks at it in such an interesting way by exploring how growing up with this toxic mindset about doing anything to ‘get’ a boyfriend and how having a boyfriend is supposedly all you need to be happy would impact your views on relationships. This comes across with how Billie and Deb try anything to ‘hold onto’ the crappy men they date and how Deb refuses to acknowledge that Josie isn’t straight and insists that she stay with a guy that she clearly has no desire to date.
Another thing to consider with Billie (who makes me cry with laughter with some lines* and especially her delivery of them, even though I don’t relate to her in the same way that I do to Josie as she’s far too real at times with the lines about ‘stifling her creativity’ and that she’s working on her art but is described as ‘not doing or making anything’), is their douchebag estranged father who left them. For instance, the show tackles the idea of absent fathers very well and while some may ascertain that Billie’s determination to do anything to try and get back with her jerk ex, Nicky, who only uses her and has no interest in committing, is related to their Dad leaving them, but, unlike much of society, the show doesn’t blame Billie for this, despite her not being perfect (justice for Josie next season with how the others treat her as she’s the heart of the show, in many ways).
There’s a weird, hypocritical tendency with anti-feminists, in general, to blame women and girls for the behaviour of their crappy Dads and/or for being single mothers. It’s also strange that they try to weaponise the idea of ‘good Dads’ by basically saying that girls are less likely to be a feminist if they have a ‘good’ Dad**, so the whole thing’s pretty messed up on many levels and just made me more grateful for this show.
There’s a lot that’s pretty damn great about SBG, overall, so subverting the idea of the family sitcom to make it darker while calling out patriarchal, heteronormative ideas about the pressure that can be put on women and girls from all angles in the dating scene is the icing on the cake, I’d say (and icing’s typically my favourite part of many cakes, tbh).
This one’s definitely worth a watch if you haven’t seen it, it’s awesome and works on multiple levels - although you might have to be in a certain mood for some of it…
*The ‘roman coke’ moment and really the whole nightclub scene (as well as most of her scenes at the birthday dinner, need I say more?
**With the irony being of course that what anti-feminists refer to as a ‘good’ Dad is often cold, distant, not emotionally invested or hands on re raising the kids and genuinely good Dads would support feminism and would never shame girls or women if their Dads sucked or treat it as some kind of moral superiority if they had a decent one.
Comments
Post a Comment